64-bit Windows 7 sporadically fails to boot - my diagnoses and spec included

[surfjungle]

Hi all,

I have a spoardic issue whereby I boot my computer but I get an error as Windows tries to load. It appears that it never gets as far as loading Windows - with this issue / these issues, I never see the Windows logo screen. Sometimes the error tells me Windows cannot be found - I have noticed that the HD is not listed during the boot process info during the POST - it may be listed other times but perhaps with a different error. When Windows does boot, it's fine although it BSOD'd recently on me but that's probably because the Raptor was sitting on top of the case (I may have touched it) rather than in it as I was trying to trouble shoot the issue at the time by reseating it's power and data cables and connecting them to different ones. Other than that, the performance of my machine has been very reliable to date when it has booted.

A friend suggested that the HD might be cold and that could cause the issue although the temperature in the room isn't overly cold. If it doesn't start, repeated attempts at rebooting appear to work. I did have an issue in the past (several months ago) where it said the OS couldn't be found (as above) upon booting but reinstalling the 64-bit Windows 7 fixed the issue but now I'm beginning to wonder if the issue was the same as the above but I didn't see it as I didn't keep reobooting or reseating the cables. The above is now occurring more frequently. I am unsure as to the cause of the issue. In an attempt to resolve it in case it's my WD Raptor giving out and give myself a performance upgrade, I have purchased a 128GB Samsung 840 PRO Basic SSD which is arriving soon. If this does not rectify the issue, I'm not too worried as I wish to purchase the parts to for a new PC once Haswell comes out and can put that SSD in it.

I'm thinking that this could be one or more of the following:

• Hard drive (Raptor)
• Motherboard (EVGA)
• Power cable
• Data cable

Any ideas what could be causing the issue? My spec is below. Thanks for your help

- PROCESSOR: Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 2.83 GHz, Yorkfield, 45nm
- MOBO: EVGA 132-CK-NF78 (nForce 780i SLI)
- RAM: 8 gigs DDR2, Dual Channel, PC2-6400, 400 MHz
- GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX280, 1 Gig, 65nm
- HARD DRIVE (OS): Western Digital 10K RPM Raptor 300 GB
- HARD DRIVE (Storage): Western Digital 7.2K RPM 1 TB
- OS: Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit
- SOUND CARD: Creative Fatal1ty

 

[vailr]

Does the data cable include the metallic "grip clip"? If they're the older type without the clip, replace the cable and see if that solves the issue.

 

[surfjungle]

Hi vailr,

Thanks for the update. My cable looks identical to this one here. Is metallic strip the "grip clip" you typed about? Note that my cables are from 2008.

What was the issue of the cables without the clip?

 

[Termie]

Try switching the SATA port that your OS drive is plugged into. Could be the port is dying. Should use SATA0 or SATA1 for your OS. See if that helps.

And whatever you do, don't clone your OS drive when you move to the SSD - do a fresh install.

 

[mfenn]

Hi vailr,

Thanks for the update. My cable looks identical to this one here. Is metallic strip the "grip clip" you typed about? Note that my cables are from 2008.

What was the issue of the cables without the clip?

Yes, the little metal latch locks the cable in place.

The reason that Windows is not booting is that your HDD isn't being detected by the BIOS. It could be a SATA cable or port issue (that is easy to test by using a different cable or port), but what is most likely happening is that the logic board on your Raptor is dying.

 

[surfjungle]

@ Termie: During startup as the BIOS find the attached hardware, SATA0 and SATA1 come back as empty, then it says it's trying to resolve something to do with IDE drives and after that it finds my two SATA connected drives which come up. This doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. I really need to take a photo of the computer booting which would allow me to be more precise about the above information which I will do later today (it's just after lunch in Dublin and I'm at work). Don't worry, I'd never clone the OS - fresh installs always!

@ mfenn: thanks for the clarification. Those sata cables are very flimsy and nothing seems to definitively lock into place for either hard drive. I'm getting my hard drives and new cables today and so hope I don't have the same issue. I would appreciate if you would explain what you mean by the logic board and where that fits into the elements that make up the overall HD? I'm hoping the new SSD and cabling will sort things out for me.

 

[mfenn]

The logic board is the circuit board on the bottom of the HDD. It's what contains the controllers for the motor and heads and also provides the interface with the rest of the machine (via SATA). If that board isn't powering up enough for the computer to detect it, the rest of the HDD is a useless hunk of metal and glass.

 

[surfjungle]

@mfenn: Thanks for explaining that.

I got my new Samsung 840 Pro Basic 128 gig SSD and Western Digital 3 TB HDD and have installed them and they work. Something very interesting to note is that time it takes to register the two new drives and the old 1 TB drive in the BIOS is less than 1 second, compared with ~15 seconds with the Western Digital Raptor and 1 TB drive. This leads me to believe that there was an issue with the Raptors hard drive's logic board or something similar. I'm using two new Asaka cables for the two new drives.

As a side note, my 3 TB hard drive would only register as ~746 gigs in Windows 7 64-bit Ultimate's Disk Management subsystem. After a bit of research, I found the issue to be that I needed to update my motherboard chipset drivers (NVidia) in Windows - I didn't need to flash the BIOS - and after the NVidia driver update, my drives full capacity registered.

 

[mfenn]

Glad everything worked out for you!